‘Feathers have been ruffled’: Life after Cummings at No.10

Boris Johnson used today’s press conference to issue sobering news: warning that the new Covid strain may be more deadly. The better news? The vaccines that have been approved are likely to be as effective against the new strain as the original. There were also figures to suggest things are slowly improving: the R number has fallen to a rate of between 0.8 and 1. And 5.4 million people, around one in ten of the adult population, have now received their first dose of the vaccine.

Yet despite the good news on the vaccine rollout, there is little in the way of optimism in 10 Downing Street this week. Instead, advisers and officials are increasingly pessimistic over the chance of easing restrictions anytime soon, with the Prime Minister’s spokesperson declining this week to even say lockdown would be over by the summer. ‘Remember when people spoke of the vaccine as the way to freedom?’, says one official lamenting the recent change in tone in Whitehall.